[Tom Smith]

We're laying back to a variety of tape formats: Sony HDCAM SR, Digibeta (on DVW-500 & MVW-2000), D5, NTSC & PAL. Seems like the "problem" tapes are Digibeta, I don't remember having any SRs rejected.

I still feel that, regardless of the tape format or particular deck being used, jogging the deck to a still frame and listening to the audio stutter while the deck tries to play 1 frame of video and 1 frame of audio isn't a valid way to verify sync.

I do think that the variety of tape formats and decks will make that process, however accurate or inaccurate it may be, return inconsistent results. Which, in my mind, makes the test invalid.